How to survive a small plane crash. Pilot in Trussville mishap gives account and 3 tips

"I put out an immediate mayday, mayday, mayday and opened the window to clear the smoke."

View full sizeSon Taylor Ewing and father Kent Ewing have picture snapped moments after climbing out of crashed airplane. (photo courtesy Kent Ewing)

It was a clear Thanksgiving Day morning, 7:20 a.m. Virginia time, when pilot Kent Ewing boarded his small V-tail plane enroute from Norfolk to Birmingham for a holiday family reunion at his daughter's house.

On board for the 3-1/2-hour flight were his son and his son's girlfriend.

And a freshly baked pumpkin pie.

But delivery of the pie and passengers to the Thanksgiving dinner table took a terrifying twist near the end of the flight when the engine blew out over Trussville, less than 20 miles from Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

But, as Ewing relates to Alabama Media Group in a phone interview and an essay he has submitted to an aviation magazine: "All in all, it was a beautiful day for flying."

"As we passed north of Atlanta into Georgia and Alabama we commented on how great the visibility was -- we could see center city Atlanta and actually could pick out Stone Mountain to the East of the city!" Ewing wrote in his essay. "It was one of those days. The drone of the engine put my two passengers to sleep for a short while. I took a peaceful shot of them using my mini iPad.

"The quiet before the storm," he wrote.

Approaching Birmingham, the tower radioed: "N5655D you are cleared to descend to 3500, turn left to 245 degrees to avoid the Birmingham departure corridor."

Ewing said they waited until about 18 miles from the airport, its outline in sight and started a descent at 500 feet per minute.

"Pretty routine stuff," Ewing said.

Routine shattered at about 5,400 feet.

"We got a muffled pow/bam, immediate white smoke in the cabin and a spray pattern of oil on the windscreen," Ewing wrote. "My son (Taylor) and I go into immediate action."

As a flight and ground instructor, Ewing has been teaching this kind of incident for years "so no buck fever here," he said.

"I put out an immediate mayday, mayday, mayday and opened the window to clear the smoke."

The airport control tower began telling him where the freeways were and Ewing told them he didn't think they had engine power to make it the needed eight or so miles to a freeway.

"I did reach down and switch tanks---just because we train that way," Ewing wrote. "I did turn on the fuel boost pump with nothing registering so put it back off. No need to have excess gas on a blown engine."

About 4,000 feet Ewing said his mind switched to landing mode. Interstate 59 was too far north and I-20 was too far south.

"My son correctly kept pointing out the Birmingham Airport at 1230 o'clock and kept scanning the instrument panel and the outside world with his cell phone," Ewing wrote.

He homed in on a field about 2,000 feet long with trees and a fence line down the middle.

As we lined up parallel to the fence line I could see the gray barn at the far south end of the field," he wrote. "Where I wished to touch down ended up about 800 to 1,000 feet behind me."

They touched down at about 90 knots (103 mph), bounced twice.

"Our skid marks showed up about 300 feet prior to the barn," he said. "As we hit the southern edge of the gravel drive leading up to the barn, we went airborne again and into the tree line at 50 knots. ... I was aiming at light spots between the trees, mostly small oaks. We did not hit any directly head on.

"The right wing tip light was removed by a pole next to the barn, but the left wing hit a tree with enough force to turn us left 90 degrees before we came to a stop by a hefty tree which caught the airframe exactly at the right wing root where the door hinges are. The door (we had not cracked it) flew off and landed about 30 feet down track from the aircraft; my sunglasses and my son's cell phone went another 100 feet down the same track."

Going through Ewing's mind was a quote by famed pilot Bob Hoover: "Fly the aircraft as far into the crash as far as you can."

That means "don't give up," Ewing said. "Continue to stay in control of the aircraft."

Ewing had minor cracked ribs but no injuries requiring hospitalization. Once out of the plane, "we were high-fiving."

Kent Ewing's single engine plane made an emergency landing in a field near Trussville resulting in the three occupants of the plane receiving minor injuries. The single engine plane came to a stop near a barn. (Frank Couch/fcouch@al.com/al.com)

"We even checked to see if the pumpkin pie survived," he said. "It did."

Ewing said he doesn't know why the engine failed, having shown no signs of trouble in previous inspections.

"I just hope the NTSB can conduct a sufficiently thorough evaluation to determine something meaningful in order to predict and/or prevent future catastrophic failures," he said.

Ewing's three takeaways from his plane crash:

If you do not have shoulder harnesses, do not fly your plane. I won't go with you.

Always have a place picked out to land, no matter the phase of flight. Always know the terrain below you, the surface wind, the glide ratio, etc. At 5,000 feet AGL you have 5 minutes until you touch down with no power.

Execute your plan to meet up with the planet, and fly the airplane all the way into the crash!!